The story is on the weak side as well, in its structure it is an odd and predictable(in the way the romance is developed) one complete with an ending that felt very tacky and artificial and a closing sequence that fitted all too easily. The writing feels stale and forced, I accept it was intended as a sort of absurdist kind of humour, but the script was mostly unfunny and lacked freshness.
His direction is reminiscent of his directing style in Paint Your Wagon, for me that means stage-bound and too smug. I have never particularly cared for Logan as a film director, excepting the flawed but entertaining South Pacific.
However, Joshua Logan's direction is quite poor. If you forgive the fact her acting feels occasionally tired in comparison to her other roles, she does do very well with a more tortured and very touching characterisation than ever before.
Bus Stop does have some good music too, and while her character isn't the most likable of all in her career Marilyn Monroe is very beautiful and charming. The film does look very nice, the costumes are very pretty, the sets and scenery don't look wobbly and superficial and the cinematography is excellent mostly. I did want to like Bus Stop, seeing as I always find Marilyn Monroe watchable, but I just didn't care for it. Reviewed by TheLittleSongbird 4 / 10 Although I love Marilyn Monroe, I didn't care for this! That's pretty bad-especially considering all the Ed Wood, Jr., Ray Dennis Steckler and Al Adamson films I have seen! Their films are cheap and meant to be grade-D drive-in movies-what's the excuse for this film for being almost equally bad?! For probably only the second or third time out of over 5300 reviews that I simply couldn't finish watching the film-Murray's character was THAT irritating. Now I am going to admit something that I very rarely do with films. One reviewer describes him as acting as if he escaped from a mental hospital and is off his medication!! Another said they wanted to shoot him in the head! In hindsight, I guess I'm being pretty kind with my review. However, I am not the only one who thinks this about Murray in this film. However, I assume the film had a director (though it's not obvious) and someone had to write this drivel. Murray, of course, can be blamed for much of this. No young man can be THAT naive when it comes to women or when it comes to leaving their home-and that would even include Mowgli from THE JUNGLE BOOK! His performance (if you want to call it that) is more akin to having Jethro Bodine play the role!! It was that ridiculously overplayed and unsubtle. However, his overacting not only overshadowed Miss Monroe's shortcomings in her role, but really grated on my nerves.
The biggest fault with the movie isn't Marilyn's overly broad performance but Don Murray's. However, despite some decent reviews, the film was a terrible mess due to a poor script and one performance in particular.
After all, by 1956, Marilyn Monroe was a bona fide star, having appeared in such blockbusters as GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES, THE SEVEN YEAR ITCH, RIVER OF NO RETURN and HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE, so you would have expected 20th Century Fox to pull out all the stops with BUS STOP. Reviewed by MartinHafer 2 / 10 Amazingly bad acting spoils the film